Pages

Sunday, August 18, 2013

LUV News Sunday 18 August 2013

Reproducing here, once again, the LUV Newsletter (see tags for other examples). And once again, I can't figure out what's going on with the font:

MY MURDERS ARE BETTER THAN YOURS

Since the U.S. murders people at abandon with its drone strikes, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they enlisted an 8-year-old boy to help do their dirty work. (But don't forget that Obama shed a tear for the children of Newtown! And for Trayvon Martin! He's so sensitive! He cares!). -LS

REAPING REWARDS

The NSA is only one head of the National Security State Hydra. Thomas Hedges attended the recent drone convention in Washington, D.C. and wrote about the goings-on there. The lobbyists and corporate execs have nothing but contempt for us. We pay them. We pay them and we pay for their murderous products with our taxes. Yet they're positively gleeful in their contempt. See especially the remarks of a man named Daryl Jenkins. He teaches at Georgetown. And he's sold his soul to the drone industry. Just think -- this contempt is what you and your kids are paying for (at $50,000 a year, to boot) in the halls of academe. -LS

"WE TORTURED YOU; NOW YOU OWE US"

In the twisted world of mercenaries and war contractors, if you are a victim of torture, not only should you just shut up about it, you should pay for the legal expenses of your torturers.

No, I am not making this up.

Four men who were tortured at Abu Ghraib tried to sue the American "defense" contractor who tortured them. Their case was thrown out of court. So the contractor, CACI International (yes, the name has an unintended appeal), has turned around and sued the victims.

There's a famous saying: "you can't shame the shameless." Obviously it's true. And though I believe in non-violence, may I just say that if one of these "contractors" were ever to meet a bad end, I would raise a glass of champagne. -LS

When people ignore the suffering of The Other, it's only a matter of time before that hurt is brought to bear on those people as well. It's impossible, therefore, not to look at it as a form of poetic justice. When people of privilege, for example, choose to look the other way while poor people are exploited, they shouldn't be surprised when they eventually find out it's their turn to be exploited next. History and literature are full of these lessons. -Lisa Simeone

Under Obama, Tyranny Is the New Transparency

“Many of the mechanisms that have been reserved to hunt down and eviscerate the lives of African-Americans are now being used to destroy white lives.”

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden may never get the opportunity to meet and compare notes about reshaping the world’s understanding of the US surveillance-cloaked-as-national-security-state. Yet their courage in blowing the whistle on high governmental criminality has recast the US Empire in ways unimaginable since the 1960s. Both whistleblowers are of European descent—a heritage still laden with privilege in the US. The Obama administration’s zeal when it has encountered dissent has broadened the State’s parameters for seek-and-destroy missions. Gone are the comforts of skin privilege with Obama-as-agent-for-the-1% sending clear signals that in these United States everyone is a suspect—except the politicos and their overlords.

On July 31, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was acquitted of the most serious charge of aiding the enemy that could have carried a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, he still faces nearly two dozen additional charges in connection with his leak of classified information to WikiLeaks. While unexpected, these charges could possibly land Manning in prison for over 100 years. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden, after exposing widespread illegal surveillance of American citizens and foreign governments fled the US to Russia to avoid the incarceration and torture that Manning has endured.

“Everyone is a suspect—except the politicos and their overlords.”

Manning and Snowden were both on tracks that enjoyed the many advantages of white privilege. Manning, a high school graduate, was not assigned to the mess hall as a cook but rather trained as an intelligence analyst, receiving a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) security clearance. According to No FEAR employment data, a significant level of complaints have been filed against the Army by African-Americans for job discrimination. Many blacks with the same level of education as their fellow white troops find themselves in positions that do not lend themselves to upward mobility. Edward Snowden was also a high school graduate, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and later hired by Booze Allen as a technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA). According to Snowden, his life was “very comfortable,” earning a salary of “roughly US $200,000.” With this substantial salary, Snowden was stationed in Hawaii and enjoying the American dream—a dream that most African-Americans with a high school degree can only imagine and far removed from Dr. King’s celebrated vision.

All that was required of Manning and Snowden to harvest the bounties of white privilege was that they look the other way when faced with—in Manning’s case—war crimes, including the callous slaughter of innocent civilians and its cover-up by his superiors in Iraq—and in Snowden’s case—sweeping invasions of privacy domestically and worldwide. Both witnessed government corruption. And both put duty to their fellow citizens above their own personal benefit, effectively throwing any possibility of a comfortable life and “rewarding” career overboard when they decided to expose the lies, crimes, and corruption inside the US government.

“Snowden was stationed in Hawaii and enjoying the American dream—a dream that most African-Americanswith a high school degree can only imagine.”

Jesselyn Radack in a recent August 2nd Washington Post article titled, Bradley Manning’s Conviction Sends a Chilling Messagewrites: “With the guilty verdict against Pfc. Bradley Manning, President Obama has won what Nixon could not: an Espionage Act conviction against a government employee accused of mishandling classified information. Obama’s administration has relied heavily on the draconian World War I-era law—meant for prosecuting spies, not whistleblowers—in its ruthless, unprecedented war on ‘leaks,’ invoking it seven times (more than all other U.S. presidents combined) to go after people who reveal information embarrassing to the United States or worse that exposes its crimes.”

But that was the point! The Espionage Act enacted June 15, 1917 has traditionally been used as a political cover to intimidate dissidents and whistleblowers. Among those charged under this act are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (executed: June 19, 1953), John Kiriakou (CIA official who first exposed CIA torture programs who is now serving 20 months in federal prison), Thomas Drake (former senior executive at NSA who exposed government waste but whose case was dropped), and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

The government has used Manning’s prosecution and the demonization of Snowden to send a chilling message to any potential whistleblower, but pointedly to white people. Many of the mechanisms that have been reserved to hunt down and eviscerate the lives of African-Americans are now being used to destroy white lives. Call it equal opportunity retaliation. The message is clear: Power will tolerate no measure of dissent or opposition. Despite these clear messages, whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning continue to disdain the personal perks of privilege for the greater good of informing their fellow citizens of the strange fruit their government wants no one to see hanging in the courtyard of national security.

Can’t Buy Me Love

To senior government officials whose very election to so-called public office is largely predicated upon being bought and sold by corporate campaign donations, there is no more frightening a threat than a conscientious subordinate who cannot be bought. Unlike those who—despite their crimes—will have presidential libraries erected in their name and quarter-million-dollar honoraria for speaking engagements that perpetuate their lies, Manning and Snowden did not sell out. It must give our noble public servants pause to know that these whistleblowers disdain the elite’s crowning cynicism—that everyone has a price.

“I can report that the United States is prepared to provide to the Russian government the following assurances regarding the treatment Mr. Snowden…First, the United States would not seek the death penalty for Mr. Snowden should he return to the United States” and that “Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.”

One can only conjecture that on its face this letter attempts to remove any rationale for Mr. Snowden’s needing asylum. Given the United Nations’ condemnation of the treatment of Pfc. Manning while imprisoned at Quantico as cruel and inhuman -- “The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence” -- why would anyone take Holder’s assertions seriously? This, especially since any mention of bringing George W. Bush et al to justice for the torture regimen that was instituted during his presidency have been dismissed as happening “in the past” and that we as a people “need to move forward.”

We need to move forward into what, exactly? Noam Chomsky, commenting on the government’s assurance that Snowden would not be tortured, writes: “But U.S. government spokespersons assured the world that Snowden will be granted the full protection of American law—referring to those same laws that have kept U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning…in prison for three years, much of it in solitary confinement under humiliating conditions. Long gone is the archaic notion of a speedy trial before a jury of peers.”

The regressive Wolfowitz Doctrine of preemptive strike, generally viewed as a military strategy has now found its domestic application. An extrapolation of this doctrine is that everyone is considered an enemy combatant—and can be taken out by executive decree—without due process, without habeas corpus, without charge, without a public trial and without the president, the Congress or the courts even batting an eyelash.

Welcome to President Obama’s brave new world of transparency.

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA is available through amazon.com and the National Whistleblower Center. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered vanadium mine workers. Marsha’s successful lawsuit lead to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet.

Kevin Berends is Director of Communication, No FEAR Institute, co-founder of Lake Affect Magazine, and producer of the independent television program streetlevel.

Bombazine

I chose the name because of the fashion reference and the inherent play on words -- "bomb" as in "you're the bomb," "that dress is the bomb," and "zine" referring to the independent publications of yesteryear. Since I write about politics, fashion, art, design, beauty, etc., I thought "bombazine" was the perfect name.

The fact that "bomb" is also a trigger word for our DHS/NSA overlords is icing on the cake.

In addition to doing original writing, I also re-publish other things that I think are worthwhile, with, of course, full attribution to the authors. I don't think I write deathless prose; therefore, I have no problem calling attention to the prose of others. I realize this is anathema to some in the blabbosphere (who apparently think they do write deathless prose). Tough shit.

Sorry, this blog doesn't accept comments. I don't have time to wade through spammers, plants, and trolls, not to mention pearl-clutching Pollyannas who go into cardiac arrest over naughty words. This is an adult blog that discusses adult topics. If you're offended by language -- or ideas -- this isn't the place for you.

"So, the Occupy movements have leaders now? Weren't the righties bitching yesterday that it was a leaderless rabble? Which is it? Leaderless rabble or deluded sheeple under the tyrannic sway of NPR opera critics?"10/20/11, 1:22pm -cletör

"What better way to enslave a man than to give him the vote and tell him he’s free." -Albert Camus

The Republicans are leading us on the road to ruin, and the Democrats distinguish themselves by proposing to take the scenic route.

"Once effectively dehumanized, and hence cancelled as potential subjects of moral demands, human objects of bureaucratic task-performance are viewed with ethical indifference, which soon turns into disapprobation and censure when their resistance, or lack of co-operation, slows down the smooth flow of bureaucratic routine." -Zygmunt Bauman,The Social Dynamics of Fascism

“Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual, and putting terror in every heart.” -Justice Robert. H. Jackson, Chief U.S. prosecutor, Nuremberg Trials, 1949

"Meh, Nuremberg, Schmuremberg."-United Sheeple of America

"The general sentiment of mankind is that a man who will not fight for himself, when he has the means of doing so, is not worth being fought for by others, and this sentiment is just. For a man who does not value freedom for himself will never value it for others, or put himself to any inconvenience to gain it for others. Such a man, the world says, may lie down until he has sense enough to stand up . . .

"If there is no struggle there is no progress . . . This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

-Frederick Douglass, 1857

"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."-Article 14, UN Declaration of Human Rights

"Any imbecile can squeeze a trigger, set fire to a fuse, kill two men and even a tyrant. And then what? What changes? When one tyrant dies, they create another, and often the future tyrants are the very ones who fired the shot. No, it isn’t by strewing corpses about that you make the world a little more bearable. It’s with ideas! The real bombs are ideas." -Alexandros Panagoulis, as quoted by Oriana Fallaci in A Man

"Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession." -American journalist Barrett Brown, persecuted, prosecuted, and jailed for speech

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war. That is understood.

"But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."